Communication systems including high-speed transceivers are used to communicate data between devices. The performance of a communication system may be monitored by measuring the latencies of components of the communication system. In addition, measured latencies may be used to improve the performance of the communication system.
Data buffers (e.g., first in first out (FIFO) data buffers) in the communication system may contribute to the latency of a communication system. In one example, a transmitter used in a serializer-deserializer (SERDES) of the communication system includes a data buffer, and the latency of the data buffer may be affected by the unknown phase relationship between clock signals (e.g., read and write clock signals) and control signals (e.g., a reset signal). For a data buffer with write and read pointers, the latency of the data buffer may be determined from the write and read pointers. However, such a latency may not be determined to a fraction of a cycle (e.g., a unit interval (UI)) of transmit or receive clocks, because the write and read pointers change too quickly.
Accordingly, it would be desirable and useful to provide an improved way of measuring the latency of data buffers in the communication system.